Emmett Till’s Casket To Be Displayed In Washington, DC Museum

CHICAGO – Plans are in the works to exhibit the casket that once held the body of lynching victim Emmett Till at the Smithsonian Institution’s planned National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington when it opens in 2015.

The glass-topped casket held the 14-year-old Chicagoan’s mutilated body for 50 years after his 1955 slaying in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Till’s body was exhumed from Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip in 2005 when the FBI tried to find possible accomplices in the killing.

Till was reburied in a new casket, and the original was recently found rusting in a shed at Burr Oak during investigation of an alleged grave-reselling scandal.

Museum officials and members of Till’s family are expected to announce the casket’s donation before a ceremony Friday to commemorate 54 years since Till’s murder.